These may be the best cookies in the world. Okay, they’re not really cookies, per se. At least not in the French sense. Les cookies refers to chocolate chip cookies and these ultra-thin, ultra-crisp, and ultra-buttery tasting crêpes dentelles are so different, yet so good, you’ll find yourself eating your way through several of them in no time. To prove that point, as a courtesy, the…
A friend recently sent me a link to an ice cream recipe that used cornstarch, rather than eggs, as a binder and thickener. That prompted me to think (and write him back) about an ice cream-making technique I learned about when writing The Perfect Scoop. Talking to Faith Willinger, an expert on Italian cuisine, she told me that some Italian ice creams (namely in Sicily)…
Someone from San Francisco told me that there were now too many ice cream shops in the city. I didn’t think that was possible, but I guess things have changed since I moved away. (There are also some amazing bakeries there as well, which I don’t think is anything to grouse about either.) Just like in San Francisco, not only has the baking scene in…
During the summer, at outdoor flea markets and brocantes, you’ll invariably find me on my hands and knees, rifle through boxes that are jammed with stuff, since ya never know what you’ll pluck out. I’m particularly keen on finding old French baking items, although I’ve learned that all those pretty little tin tart molds are best left to clutter someone else’s kitchen drawers. And since…
We survived the recent heatwave, which seemed like a good time to update my post on Vanilla Ice Cream, with new pictures. Probably the worst thing you can do in a heatwave is photograph ice cream, but I did it. As a former restaurant line cook, I can cook or bake through anything. Having a batch of freshly churned ice cream when it’s that hot,…
Papaya isn’t a very common fruit in many parts of the world. But if you go to the tropics, you’ll see them piled up at markets, and even alongside the roads, where people are selling the overload from their trees. Papaya is a curious fruit that is often just out of the sightline of our radars, and is usually eaten fresh. Some varieties are spectacularly…
When I originally came up with this ice cream, the year was 2009, which seems like a long, long time ago, in so many ways. Absinthe had been banned in France since 1914, blamed for a host of societal ills, even being accused of causing people to go crazy (which has since been debunked; most blame additives added to cheap absinthe, which caused brain damage),…
I’m always interested in ice cream, no matter where it’s from. But probably the most intriguing one I’ve ever come across was booza, an ice cream thickened, not with eggs or cornstarch, but with sahleb and mastic. Republic of Booza was opened by Jilbert El-Zmetr and Michael Sadler, along with two business partners, in Brooklyn, New York, bringing this ice cream stateside. Jilbert owned a booza…
When I wrote the first edition of The Perfect Scoop. I only allowed myself to use the word “refreshing “ once, which I’m pretty sure I did. When you write a book, there’s a tendency to include everything that you possibly can, but a number of things can nudge them out, such as having photos, which everyone loves. So although I included Plum-Blackberry Swirl Ice…
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